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My post saying that medicine would never see a $1,000 genome generated some fantastic debate. Over at Genetic Future, Daniel MacArthur argues that you will, in fact, be able to get a $1,000 genome if you really want it:

There's certainly some depressing truth here. I believe Herper is right that if you intend to access your genome sequence via a traditional medical route, it will certainly cost more than $1000 for the foreseeable future - if indeed you can get access to it at all, which is by no means guaranteed. The costs of clinical sequencing will include even more overheads than Herper notes in his short post: for instance, even as the accuracy of high-throughput sequencing technology improves, there will still be a need for variants with major medical impact to be independently validated in clinical labs, and custom assays don't come cheap.

However, many of these extra costs of clinical sequencing will be further inflated by regulatory demands (at least some of which will be arbitrary and pointless), and many will only apply if you obtain your genome through the medical system. Individuals with the motivation to seek alternative routes will be able to obtain a perfectly serviceable genome sequence at a substantially lower price: they'll have to be cautious in how they interpret the results, of course (although, importantly, this is also true of a medical test), but it will be possible to obtain substantial and potentially extremely useful information from your own genome without having to pass through the clinical toll-booths.

This is basically true -- in the same way it's true that people who want their genomes now can buy them through Illumina or Knome. I keep hearing about scientists who plan to sequence themselves. Steve Quake, the founder of Helicos, basically did this, as did J. Craig Venter. But I do wonder how easy it will be to get a research-level DNA sequence if sequencing manages to get on the medical reimbursement gravy train.

Another point -- a really good one -- was made in the comments by Kevin Davies, the author of the book The $1,000 Genome. The term "$1,000 genome" was always meant as a research idea, and scientists tend to talk in orders of magnitude. So long as the number has the right number of zeros, what's a few grand between prognosticators? He writes:

Incredibly, we’ve seen the cost of genome sequencing plummet almost tenfold each year for the past five years.

The cost of a personal genome doesn’t have to sink to $1,000, it just has to be orders of magnitude less than the first personal genome (Jim Watson’s sequence cost $1 million in 2007). I quote Helicos founder Stan Lapidus in my book, who said: “Here’s how we think of the ‘thousand-dollar genome’: anything between $100 and $10,000 is the ‘thousand-dollar genome.’”

True -- I remember a paper by Washington University researcher Elaine Mardis from 2006 before Illumina's Solexa system launched calling for a $1,000. At the time, she wrote, a genome cost $100,000. But now that I've mentioned Helicos twice (three times!) it's worth noting something to people looking at investing in Complete Genomics, Pacific Biosciences, even Life Technologies and Illumina: Helicos launched a DNA sequencer in 2008, and now it is a penny stock trading on the pink sheets. This is still biotech, and fast currents can quickly become treacherous.

Anyway, my attempt at "Gene Week" has been a big success in terms of starting discussion, and an utter failure in terms of getting most of the ideas I wanted to get out into text on your screen. There's really only one thing to do: continue into next week. But I have other things to write about, too. I'll start writing drug development stories again soon, too, I promise.